Three Counter-Intuitive Ways to Create Beautiful Experiences
Believe me, we also love Design Sprints...
One of the critical things which separate great products from the good ones is how well they’re designed and crafted. We know that for sure. We are the human beings, addicted to some of the products just for how intuitive they are for us, even if they really don’t meet any real need. It seems nerdy, but still... Look at Houzz. I certainly do not have enough budget or time to buy new furniture for my apartment but God it’s really awesome to browse them from Houzz. It’s just like walking around the digital version of IKEA without any crowd. Kind of addiction.
So, what are they doing to create that beautiful experience?
Of course, it’s not just applying any design guideline or creating definitive business flows. There should be more than that. Nowadays we are really digging into Jobs To Be Done methodology but it is another story. Let’s focus.
If you are a startup with a little budget and really short time to go to market, you should hack this problem just like all other problems you have. No excuse.
There are tons of articles about how not to make any mistakes while creating digital products and how to design the experience.
- User surveys & interviews to get what users needs are
- UX Case Studies to see where your app is being creepy for users and how to make it normal again
- A/B tests to understand the stuff that you can’t get with qualitative approaches
This list might go forever…
These are the methodologies to create a fine looking app or sustain greatness of your existing app. Yet, this is mediocre. And we cannot afford them with money or people.
We need more than that, right? We need to create an experience which amazes our customers even if we’re doing our MVP (btw, when is the time that MVP means shitty product? I’ve really missed that point).
I’m not sure if it is the best way or not, but we have our own helper methodology to create our beloved Bounty and the business dashboards we’re sharing with our clients. Certainly, we would have preferred to do this by doing more elegant ways; but we love to hack. Please take this list as an inspiration, not a guideline. Here is a little list that we used to streamline our design process:
1- Stalk the products you love from both application stores
Select at least 10–15 apps and start to follow their updates. Investigate those apps so deep that even if there is just a ‘minor fixes’ update, you discover what is changed easily. This is a great practice to create your own gut feeling to feel what is important and what is not, without analyzing it. I know, it sounds a little bit weird, but I’m not saying that you should trust your gut feeling at all the time; there is no question on when you have data, you should trust that or find a way to create. However, you’ll need your gut at certain points, I’m sure experienced PMs get what I’m talking about.
My top 5 are Medium, Slack, Houzz, Anchor and Trello these days.
To discover yours, here is a tip list;
- Find great agencies(Fueled etc.) and look at what they’ve done by checking their dribble or Behance accounts
- Application stores -> Editor’s Choice section
- Product Hunt as always
- Add Panda to your Chrome and use it like a designer
2- Specify the question that bothers you and STOP thinking about that
Again, I know it sounds like ‘wtf?’. I don’t have any proof for this suggestion but I’m using it a lot. I think, our background processes are pretty under-valued. Whenever I was stuck with a problem about the product-especially for the UX stuff-, I’ve found the solution when I was not thinking about that. Then, I’ve realized the pattern. Isn’t it the best part of our jobs? Finding the patterns? As of that point, I started to use this pattern as a methodology.
Just an example; while we were working on our form builder, we needed a better experience. The intuitive thing was using drag&drop just like you can see at TypeForm or SurveyMonkey and we were using that kind of thing. But, you know that experience sucks. Try to create a form on both platforms, you will feel that something is not right! I feel that it’s not right when I’m using drag&drop on any PC browser based products because of my hand’s interaction with touchpad and I’m not actually dragging something. Feedback loop is broken. But, is there any way to do it better? I can think about for hours and probably I would have been hopeless to solve it. Instead of doing that, I’ve just stopped to think about it and tried to use some cool products. And that day, I’ve realized Craft.io (this is one hell of a product management tool) has awesome ‘Story Add’ experience by using little ‘+’ between the stories.
Problem solved. It took less than a day and I’ve done lots of other things that day.
3- Study Newton Physics!
Did you know that most of the greatest designers have an engineering background? I think this might be one of the strongest reason behind that.
Creating an awesome experience is really about creating a flawless visual architecture. Our eyes and brain are looking for the consistency that they get from the other part of the world. When we are consuming digital products, we expect everything works perfectly logical and it’s natural for us and we don’t even notice or care about how it works. However, if there is a problem with the hierarchy; we’ll at least notice it. Understanding whether there is a mismatch with a real world or not is really difficult from a user’s standpoint. So we, as PMs can not get real feedback about it from user interviews. People do not feel the ‘love’, although page to page everything on your creation may look OK.
Dig into the hierarchy on those times, then focus on the interactions and animations.
The digital world and experiences are all about movement. It is dynamic. All the toolsets allow us to create gorgeous static images of pages or snapshots of experiences, but the dynamic part is key for creating real experiences. So learn Newton’s rules.
- Learn motion.
- Learn momentum.
- Learn force.
In order to create intuitive experiences, you need to understand real experience in a more conscious way. Starting to work on physics can provide a great perspective on that and help you to get what is behind ‘the movement’.
Again, take this list as an inspiration. I read nearly 10 articles every day about user experience and design and I really get bored with them. We need new stuff, we need out of the box things. Find your own ways and please share with us.
We need the shift.
Hope to see you on our company blog too! For more information about Twentify, please send us an e-mail at sales@twentify.com.
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